Mazda’s Royal Hydrogen Delivery

Found an interesting story kicking around the news pages today with one of my favourite ‘affordable coupes’ – i.e not Ferrari price – being delivered to a Royal audience over in Norwa.

The first of 30 to be delivered to the country, the first RX-8 Hydrogen hit the road in Norway at a ceremony in Oslo attended by the Prince of Norway and their Minister of Transportation. It’s part of their ‘Sustainable Zoom-Zoom’ strategy and looks pretty good too…

Yeah, from the outside it looks good because it’s essentially an RX-8 with funky paintworl. But… in terms of green credentials and actually making a positive step toward more environmentally-friendly motoring this is a huge step.

The fact that the first Hydrogen RE is an RX-8 rather than something that looks comical is important too, appearances are all important in cars afterall. It makes me think of the Doc’s excuse for using a DeLorean as a time machine in Back To The Future – if you’re gonna build one, might as well do it in style.

The only down side to me as far as this story is concerned is that it’s in Norway. Sure there’s going to be an infrastucture of hydrogen fueling stations along the North Sea coast but what about here?

There’s plenty of windmill farms along the South Coast in the UK now, why no hydrogen stations?When am I going to see this Mazda in Sussex or Kent making the coastal roads cleaner?

If they can make them this good looking, the real question is not whether they can bring them into production but whenand how much? Gotta be better than driving a Prius around.